Employment Laws

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President Obama instructed the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) yesterday to change regulations to expand the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) overtime provisions, in an effort to provide time-and-a-half wages to more employees.  The President signed a memorandum instructing his Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez to “update” the DOL’s regulations regarding which employees are exempt from the FLSA’s coverage, and which employees are non-exempt, and thus must be paid time-and-a-half their regular wage rate for all hours worked beyond 40 hours in a week.  The White House also issued a “fact-sheet” on the issue.

While it is not clear exactly what the DOL may do in response to the President’s direction, many feel that one likely step will be an attempt by the DOL to amend the FLSA’s regulations to raise the salary requirement employees must meet to qualify as an exempt executive, administrative or professional employee.  The current salary requirement is at least $455 per week, an amount established with the last set of DOL changes to the FLSA’s regulations back in 2004.  (Prior to 2004, the salary amount was $250, a number which had stayed constant since 1975.)

The Department of Labor says that contractors must follow the new OFCCP regulations for any affirmative action plans that are developed after March 24, 2014.  Will you be ready to assess your company’s compliance with the new requirement of seven percent (7%) disabled employees in each job group?  Will you be able to track your hiring of veterans against the new hiring benchmark?  Have you thought about the new narrative language that will be needed?

We continue now with step three of seven to getting into compliance with the new OFCCP regulations. As we said in our prior post covering steps one and two, on March 24, 2014 major revisions to regulations on the laws requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in affirmative action for disabled individuals and veterans go into effect. While steps one and two need to be in place on or soon after March 24, the remaining steps are only required to be in place as of the date of the first affirmative action plan developed after March 24…but they will take some significant time and effort to implement.

On March 24, 2014, major changes to regulations on the laws requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in affirmative action for disabled individuals and veterans will go into effect. Is your company ready?

Now is the time to begin taking concrete steps to comply with the new regulations because some of the new required elements of your affirmative action program must be operational on March 24, 2014. Other requirements must be in place as of the date of your first affirmative action plan after March 24, but they make take some time to implement.

Last March, I wrote about a lawsuit the EEOC filed against a department store that allegedly refused to hire a woman because she was pregnant.  In the post “Thoughtless Comments Make For Easy Pickings,” I noted some interesting accusations contained in the case — including that the pregnant woman claimed she was told that the hiring manager “had not had much luck hiring pregnant women” and that she should re-apply “after giving birth.”

Earlier this week, we discussed how when drafting or reviewing a restrictive covenant, few are likely to devote any significant attention to the provisions in the “Miscellaneous” section of the agreement, and how this is a significant mistake.  In particular, we discussed how forum selection clauses are extremely important when drafting restrictive covenant agreements.

In this post, we are considering Choice of Law and Arbitration provisions.

When drafting or reviewing a restrictive covenant, you are likely to spend a significant amount of time considering its specific purpose and scope.

Few, however, are likely to devote any significant attention to the remaining provisions in document, including the likely “Miscellaneous” portion that is almost always a part of the agreement.  This is a mistake.  There are numerous provisions contained in this section that can, in some circumstances, be outcome-determinative.  Below is a consideration of three such provisions and their importance to your agreement.

As part of President Obama’s “Open Government Initiative,” the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) has proposed a new rule that would require employers with more than 250 employees to publicly file their injury and illness logs on a quarterly basis. OSHA has also proposed that all employers in industries with high injury rates publicly file their injury and illness reports once a year.

In a bold move by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (which covers Georgia, Florida and Alabama), the Court has overruled the long-standing precedent of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (“Commission”) that when a supervisor engages in safety-related misconduct, his or her “rogue conduct” is imputed to the employer.